Including more than 300 full-color photographs and diagrams, this beautiful book highlights 20 best practice designs from ecovillages around the world to show how we can live lightly on the planet no matter where on earth we live. Features Findhorn in Scotland, Auroville in India, and 18 others.

Description

About Ecovillages around the World

A beautiful, full-color book showcasing 20 best practice designs from ecovillages around the world

• Features well-established ecovillages such as Findhorn in Scotland or Auroville in India and newer initiatives such as Hua Tao in China

• Highlights the unique features of each project and their solutions to the global social and environmental challenges that confront us

• Includes more than 300 full-color photographs, maps, and diagrams

In 2015, the United Nations introduced 17 sustainable development goals to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. Aligning perfectly with the practices of ecovillages around the world, these initiatives show that ecovillages and sustainable communities are leading by example as we move into a future focused on partnership, environmental protection, prosperity, and peace for all life and the planet we live on.

Offering a visual tribute to the work ecovillages do to alleviate climate change, social conflict, and environmental damage, including more than 300 full-color photographs, maps, and diagrams, this beautiful book highlights 20 best practice designs from ecovillages around the world to show how we can live lightly on the planet no matter where on earth we live, in all climate zones and cultures. It demonstrates how ecovillages have already achieved the climate goals all of us are now striving toward through practical lifestyle changes that promote peaceful and joyful coexistence both among people and between people and nature. Far from being only aesthetic choices, these changes give an increased quality of life, healthy homes, delicious organic food, playful interdependence, a new spiritual connection to our living planet, and much more. Through their regenerative, sustainable, and peace-promoting practices, ecovillages continue the culture of traditional village living in a modern way that addresses the critical challenges of our time.

Book Excerpt

Svanholm Denmark: A working and living community by Andreas Kamp

The Svanholm community started with an advert in a Danish newspaper on May 7, 1977, with the title: Large Cohousing. The advert was placed by two families that wanted to start a working and living community in the countryside together with others. The invitation to create a large cohousing community with shared economy, common dining, consensus based decision making, equality between professions, and between women, men, children and adults, created enormous interest, and the first meeting attracted 130 people.

The pioneers purchased and took over the Svanholm Estate on May 31, 1978. Along with the 800-year-old main building and adjoining houses came over 400 hectares (988 acres) of productive farmland and forest. The original intention of working the land without using pesticides became the starting point for organic farming in Denmark, and since 1990, Svanholm has been completely organic. It is mainly a dairy and vegetable farm, but also has sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. Most land is used for fodder, but also for around 80 vegetable varieties, and berry and fruit orchards. Svanholm has sought a balance between a market-oriented and an ideological farming approach. Recent innovations include holistically-planned grazing, a dedicated vegetarian online shop and an experimental forest garden design in the new permaculture settlements.

Starting out with 150 people and only a few habitable rooms in the former estate owner’s residence was a practical challenge. Much effort has been put into renovating buildings including establishing housing, common areas, and other facilities to accommodate everybody. This development has turned the estate into a modern village providing amenities for individuals, community and visitors.

A holistic life

Svanholm was founded on a dissatisfaction with existing society and the desire to create something new and better. To do that we had to make a fresh start, and so we chose to buy the property. This has given financial restrictions, because of the enormous cost and resulting debt, so we have had to keep our feet on the ground and work hard. Debt or no debt, the people of Svanholm have a large estate of land--a potential paradise, a little enclave--that offers the freedom to try out different strategies for making our dreams come true. Actually, we have developed a kind of state within the State, with our own agreements and ideas. Svanholm has its own internal economic distribution agreements, transition strategy, traffic policy, environmental policy, education policy, health policy and more. In many ways, Svanholm has pioneered developments that have since been implemented in society at large. For instance, we have had different kinds of sabbaticals, long before the politicians in Denmark thought of it. We developed waste sorting systems and worked towards a sustainable way of life, long before the Brundtland report and the introduction of the term ‘sustainability’.

Self-government

People don’t move into the Svanholm Collective to join a specific ideology. We share common goals, but there is not a single common political or religious/spiritual basis that connects us. Our self-government approach is a way of stimulating people to be more involved in decision-making and to feel responsible for the outcome. We wanted and still want direct influence on decisions that concern our own lives. We are aware that majority rule sometimes can be at the expense of the minority. The common meeting, held once a month, is our decision-making body. We never vote, but negotiate to achieve consensus.

We have no formal leaders or ‘-isms’, our ambition is to maintain and improve our sense of community and at the same time accept individual differences--to practice equality without uniformity. This provides reassurance and a sense of belonging, and is at the same time a continuous education in compromise, openness, and reflection about personal versus communal needs and desires. It is a guiding principle for social and environmental sustainability to manage our use of resources so that we don’t use more than we give. How to practice this principle, however, is more complicated than agreeing on it!

Practicing a sustainable lifestyle has required continuous adjustments in the almost 40 years since the founding of the community. However, external reports show that we have high biological diversity and only one third of the CO2 emissions of an average Dane.

Our common economy is a cornerstone in our attempt to maintain social sustainability. It allows us to give priority to employment in the community’s kitchen, administration, maintenance group and farming and self-sufficiency activities. The increased amount of free time this gives is very attractive to people who want an alternative to the 40 hours of paid work a week, plus 20-30 hours of household chores, of a typical Danish adult.

There are many ideological, ecological and economic reasons for using Svanholm’s natural resources to support self-sufficiency. The food, such as vegetables, meat, dairy products, and eggs that the farm supplies, in addition to what is sold, contribute about half of the community’s diet. This balances the desire for homegrown food with the desire for a varied diet. Since the late eighties, two wind turbines produce enough power to cover the community’s needs. We heat our buildings with wood chips from our forest and have our own water supply and sewage treatment system.

Regarding self-sufficiency, there are, however, still significant gaps to close with respect to animal feed, fertilizer, transport fuels and a popular diet. We have realized that our self-sufficiency initiatives must proceed at a pace that is compatible wIth developments around us in order to be successful.

Author Bio

English-Norwegian Frederica Miller is a qualified architect from the architectural school in Oslo (AHO) as well as a permaculture designer. With more than 30 years’ experience in ecologically-sound building and planning, she is a popular lecturer on these subjects and regularly holds courses. The author of Levende Hus [Living buildings] and the 10 Ecovillages in 10 years in Norway report, she was awarded Oslo’s Environmental Prize for her work in 2010. She lives in Norway.

Back Cover

Back Cover Copy

ENVIRONMENT/SUSTAINABILITY

ECOVILLAGES AROUND THE WORLD

20 Regenerative Designs for Sustainable Community

This book provides a view into the future. Its many diverse examples show solutions to particular times and places. In all their experimental imperfection, ecovillages are perfect examples of what we need more of! The chronological progression from oldest to newest shows an interesting development--from projects that originally had a more spiritual origin, like Findhorn, or socially responsible origins like Solheimar, to fully-fledged ecologically planned villages that provide ready-built homes for anyone and everyone interested in making a difference, like Hurdal and Permatopia. The concept of ecovillages is no longer a marginal movement but a powerful force for change--a change that is happening not by revolution but by gentle evolution, the natural way.

“If your goal is to enrich the society that you are a part of and to have your own needs met by the society you have created, then the principle that works is: the less I take for myself, the more I will get.”--Ruben Khachatryan, Camphill Village, Norway

Hildur Jackson, who died in the autumn of 2015, was cofounder with her husband Ross Jackson of Gaia Trust, the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and Gaia Education. As a legacy of her passion for ecovillages, Hildur wanted to make a beautiful coffee table book about best-practice designs for ecovillages. To that end, she made a list of 20 veteran ecovillage projects and new innovative ones.

This book celebrates the work that all ecovillages do to alleviate climate change, reduce social conflict, and heal environmental damage. Ecovillages have already achieved within a very short time the climate goals that all of us need to reach, and they have done it by making practical lifestyle changes. These lifestyle changes promote peaceful and joyful coexistence among people and between people and nature. Far from being ascetic choices, these changes provide healthy homes, delicious organic food, playful interdependence, a new spiritual connection to our living planet, and a better quality of life. Ecovillages demonstrate how we can live lightly on the planet, in all climate zones and cultures, by embracing and enhancing the tradition of village living to address the critical challenges of our time.

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Findhorn Press is an imprint of Inner Traditions which offers books, card sets, cds and, dvds that cover a wide range of mind, body, spirit topics such as nature, spirituality, alternative health (for both people and for animals), self-help, etc.